What is the Tomatometer®?

The Tomatometer rating – based on the published opinions of hundreds of film and
television critics – is a trusted measurement of movie and TV programming quality
for millions of moviegoers. It represents the percentage of professional critic reviews
that are positive for a given film or television show.

From the Critics

From RT Users Like You!

Fresh

The Tomatometer is 60% or higher.

Rotten

The Tomatometer is 59% or lower.

Certified Fresh

Movies and TV shows are Certified Fresh with a steady Tomatometer of 75% or
higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide-release movies, 40 for
limited-release movies, 20 for TV shows), including 5 reviews from Top Critics.

The Witness Photos

Movie Info

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was repeatedly attacked on a street in Kew Gardens, Queens. Soon after, The New York Times published a front-page story asserting that 38 witnesses watched her being murdered from their apartment windows--and did nothing to help. The death of Kitty Genovese, 28, quickly became a symbol of urban apathy. THE WITNESS follows the efforts of her brother Bill Genovese as he looks to uncover the truth buried beneath the story. In the process, he makes startling discoveries about the crime that transformed his life, condemned a city, and defined an era.

"The Witness" makes an encouraging case for the argument that society is not as apathetic as we fear. But it also reveals a troubling phenomenon: our willingness to accept all that we are told as truth.

The story deftly switches focus from Bill's quest to Bill himself. We learn how and why the witness apathy story has haunted him for 50 years, his family's reaction to his admitted obsession over it, and how it shaped his life.

Skillful, complex, and purposely understated, The Witness succeeds not just as a re-examination of one of the most talked-about crimes in modern memory, but as a very touching, human tale of a brother trying to get to know the sister he lost too soon.

For years, the legend of the 38 witnesses has been held up as an example of apathy and disconnect, but The Witness proves that the fabric of humanity is actually so strong, that our ties can endure for decades after our deaths.

By the time [Bill Genovese] hires an actress to walk the same stretch of street in Kew Gardens that Kitty walked that night in 1964, having her scream and wail down footpaths and inside stairwells, I was unsettled. But not in a particularly good way.